This year's journey south is so much different than our first trip last year. Our plan was to go outside (along the coast) most of the way, but the wind conditions, both direction and strength has kept us inside on the ICW most of the way. We are now in Fernandina Beach, having finally gone outside at Charleston and re-entered at the St. Marys river.
We also experienced the skinniest water ever in a stretch of South Carolina. We knew it would be a potential problem since we would be passing this known problem spot at absolute low tide. For a 1/2 mile stretch we had continuous depths less than 5 feet. We soon ran aground and for the first time ever we could not get ourselves off on our own. We were resigned to wait on the rising tide to lift us off, but almost immediately a local guy out checking his crab traps offered to try and pull us off. Not only did he pull us off, with some difficulty, but he gave us guidance on deeper water. In this case the deeper water was 3 additional inches, but enough to keep going. It was extremely nerve racking as occasionally we could feel Ariel being bogged down as the keel ran along the bottom.
We were extremely happy to go outside and hope to continue on with more outside travel along the Florida coast. The windows for outside travel have been short. As it was the seas were building rapidly with strong east to northeast winds as we entered St. Marys.
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| Dewees Creek - one of our favorite places to anchor - north of Charleston |
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| Fort Sumter |
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